Tea for Me Stew for You
by boursin
Summary: Draco Malfoy is the Most Reasonable Person in the world! It's just by sheer accident that bad things keep happening to him, like being stalked by the ghost of an elephant or being muted irrecovably or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to Hermione Granger, who, sadly enough, is the only person who can help him right now. Humor/Angst/Romance/Existentialism/But Mostly Humor
1. Cold Window

This was not what Draco expected on a Tuesday. He didn't know what he had expected on a Tuesday, besides the usual, but it wasn't this.

In the middle of the hallway there was a person, and that person was Pansy Parkinson. Pansy was standing there being talked to by another person, and that person was Hermione Granger, and they were _not killing each other. _ They weren't even fighting, or glaring. There was nothing hostile happening at all, and he didn't know why. It warranted investigation, but casually, and in no way that could be construed as an actual _investigation_ by anyone who might be observing, because Draco Malfoy, of course, didn't care about what was going on between Hermione Granger and Pansy Parkinson that seemed wholly civil and constructive and full of inter-house unity and perhaps even this was the beginning of a whole new world, one in which houses didn't exist and everyone was equal – and at this point Draco decided he _must_ intervene. Investigation wasn't enough, considering his conclusions.

"Pansy," said Draco, after he slinked an approach, one that said he just happened to be there and didn't care at all about what was happening. Pansy broke out of her conversation easily enough and she looked at him. He didn't know where to start at this point, lost for a moment in the fact that he had never interrupted a civil conversation between a Slytherin and a Griffindor ever and his life of training in Slytherinian scenarios had never included this one. Luckily, after Pansy's eyes met his, a swift guilt passed through them, as if she'd been caught with her hand in the Griffindor cookie jar.

"Oh, Draco," she began, nothing more following. He allowed her a moment to feel awkward since it was, after all, working in his favor. He turned his attention to Granger. Her expression was vitriolic, and she looked as if she wanted to say something filled with vitriol, but she didn't. Was this because she didn't want to upset Pansy? What was _that _about?

"I have homework to do," said Granger, dismissing herself. She turned, leaving Draco alone with Pansy in the hallway. Pansy shifted her weight.

"Coming to Hogsmeade tomorrow?" she asked him, ignoring the glaring elephant in the room.

"Why is there an elephant in the room," asked Draco, momentarily distracted, "And why is it glaring at me?"

At that moment a ghost puffed meaningfully into existence from a wall, the moldy whites and yellows of his costume showered with the dust of generations. He took the reins of the elephant (who was also a ghost), and, like a solemn funeral march, led the elephant in silence down the hall. Draco and Pansy found this barely remarkable, and gave it half a thought – Draco was only happy the glare of the ghost pachyderm was no longer on his person. It didn't remove the ill-at-ease of Pansy or the equal-but-for-different-reasons-ill-at-ease of Draco. He couldn't just come right out and ask, though. That would be telling. Telling of what, he didn't exactly know.

"Hogsmeade," he said, returning to small talk, maybe.

"Yes, yes," she replied, coming into herself again. Her acerbic natural self. He briefly wondered if he would marry Pansy someday. There weren't a lot of choices these days. A flash of annoyance crossed his brain, and when she talked again it relieved him of the settling of that annoyance into a dull ache. "Hogsmeade. Tomorrow. Are you going?"

"Maybe," he replied, noncommittally. His eyes strayed, not due to restlessness, but due to habit. He didn't care enough to maintain eye contact, and he ran a finger down the length of a painting's frame. There was a modicum of dust. Everything else was forgotten.

"Who the elf dusts this place?" he demanded to know.

Pansy snorted at him and turned to walk away.

"Hey, Pansy," he said, stopping her.

"What?" she asked.

"Let me in on your plan," he said.

"What plan?" she asked.

"Whatever you're working on to dupe Granger," he said. "I saw you talking to her, and it looked civil."

Pansy looked thoughtful for a moment.

"But you're not civil," he said to her. "At least, not to Griffindors. So what is it? What're you cooking up?"

She gave him a side-eye, a smile (of sorts), and moved to a window to sneeze. He followed her. The window, iron, glass, it was illuminated in a dim-bright white-gray phosphorescence that says _Winter_. Sheets of cold emanated from the glass, untouched. Her smile smirk smile smirk shifted to a lopsided way, one that spoke of duality and when she lifted her eyes to his, there was a glint. Cold, glint, smirk in a castle of age unrecognized and he suddenly relished being Slytherin, again and again knowing he'd been sorted right, but one can never have enough reassurance regarding a decision that was made for you by a hat.

Pansy cast a silencing spell and began. Initially it had started with Professor MacGuffinagol assigning one of the house prefects of each house to planning a tea party together.

"A tea party!" exclaimed Draco, his disbelief pounding his intellect with even more disbelief.

"Draco!" exclaimed Pansy. "Do you want everyone to read your lips?"

Draco looked around. 'Everyone' included five paintings that held people, and one fish in a painting. Also there was the distant elephant ghost, who had wandered back-ish. It was such a surly elephant, that one. Draco tried to talk in a way that would make lip-reading hard, an activity which was perplexing.

"A tea party." He pursed strangely.

"Quite," said Pansy, not making any attempt to hide her lip-shaping, and that made Draco annoyed. "For everyone. It's actually a large event, more like a Yule Ball with copious amounts of tea."

"Boring so far," he replied.

"Silencio!"

She had wanded him. The outrage at his silencing! Unhindered, Pansy went on.

"We're going to give her a taste of her own medicine!" Pansy declared – and then Draco was rendered utterly frustrated in his inability to inquire how and what medicine any of this meant. She then smiled warmly at him and, leaning close, told him sotto voice, "I like it when you don't talk."

She smelled like ginger and cinnamon. He hated girls. No, he really didn't. Yes he did. No. Yes. No. Yes!

Cold seeped from the window and heat bore into him from her; his arm was cold; his hand was half-cold, his chest was hot, heat, colors of temperature radiated through him incomprehensibly and he began to forget how annoying Pansy was, because she was there, inhaling _his _scent. He wondered what he smelled like, but fleetingly because he was wholly occupied in considering She Is Soft. He opened his mouth to speak and recalled she'd silenced him a moment ago. The outrage! The manipulative little snoyden! He stepped askance.

Cold of the Window won the battle and gloried in its white-gray triumph. He let it fill him. Let him be a statue of forbidding cold, a Norse God of unyielding cruelty, etched of granite ice, and not moved by the likes of Soft, Warm, Soft. He pointed pointedly at his mouth and gave Pansy an equally pointed look.

She sighed, rolled her eyes, and recanted her spell on him.

"Don't ever do that again or I'll-"

"Silencio!"

It was _preposterous!_

She gave him a saucy wink and left. He couldn't even yell after her, and in that state, as he waited for the spell to exhaust itself, he came to the conclusion that he would never marry Pansy Parkinson in a thousand, million, billion eternal eternities. The hall fell into auditory disrepair in her absence. There was nothing left but a shambling, depressed pachyderm's ghost. He tried to ignore it, but the shambling prodded at him like a slightly-too-cold breeze.


	2. Library Avalanche

He spent some time waiting for Pansy's spell to die, but it was a stubborn thing, the window was cold, and he was late for Transfigurations. Normally he would just be late, well, no he wouldn't. He actually tried to get the best marks, and he mostly did. But how was he to go to class and avoid the discovery being made that somebody could cast an unpleasant spell on him and get away with it?

Well, Pansy wasn't getting away with it, not really. He'd never marry her now, and that was the most severe punishment he could imagine!

He haunted the doorway to Transfigurations momentarily while he set all of his intellect on making the correct choice of where to sit. His friends would talk to him and expect some sort of reply. Those who normally didn't register on his social radar (Hufflepuffs, mostly) would probably ask him a lot of moronic questions or try to make painful conversation. No, there was only one way to go about this and his eyes landed on the muggly girl with the books and the hand in the air, and the quill, chewed horribly, and everything about her was brown-ish and he wondered as he walked over how much dislike would radiate and how the silent treatment would go over.

Draco sat down beside Granger and her quill awkwardly flipped out of her hand. He gave her his best bemused disdain and the radiation began, like the sun, but full of loathing. It radiated from her and her eyes, but she didn't speak, because (due to fortune) McGonagall was lecturing and it would have been rude to talk. He made a face that implied as much to Granger and pulses of loathing radiated, one, two, before she turned away. Warm. This wasn't boring.

At breaks in the professor's lecture others would talk, but he had a fine excuse not to, because his lack of jibes was clearly creating a great unease in Granger, as if he held a sword suspended above her, but simply chose not to let it go. Tension was written on her shoulders and back, in the way she chewed (disgusting) on her quill, and the way, when he moved into a new position, her writing would loop strangely, as if startled. Draco had never enjoyed this sort of torture before. If only he had known, long ago, how powerful a tool was silence. Sadly, the lecture had to come to an end, but it provided a new hope: finding Pansy and making him unspell her. Sure, Draco had maybe sort of learned something about the value of silence (especially when it comes to making your enemies squirm), but enough was enough.

Grabbing his stuff, he all but bolted out of the room.

"What do you mean you can't dispel it?" is what Draco would have said, if he could talk. His eyes said it fairly well anyway, he thought.

"I don't know, Draco," said Pansy, seeming perplexed by her wand, and him. She tried again, and again, muttered a curse under her breath, and Draco just sort of panicked. He wanted to break her wand. He wanted to break her wand into pieces, many pieces, no, just sixteen pieces, then bake a birthday cake out of old shoes and use her wand pieces as candles and present it to her and FORCE HER TO BLOW OUT THE CANDLES OF HER BROKEN WAND.

Anyway, she was useless and he left. Madame Pomfrey was always an option… for babies. He preferred to attempt to figure this out himself before it became any more humiliating, and that naturally led him to hover in the library. He was certain to be the most perfect student Madam Pince had ever encountered, but alas not by his own doing. He was quick to make himself lost in the tall shelves, some so tall they seemed to either defy gravity or to be on the verge of causing severe injury to students perusing below. The question passed dimly through his mind about who would stack books so precariously, and how, but _magic_ and so the question never even became conscious. He was only mostly aware of how the further into the depths of the library he went, the more precariously the book stacks became. It was as if with greater and more detailed knowledge came the greater chance of having fifty stones of books fall on your head.

He smelled a ghost.

"Are you lost, Malfoy?" asked Granger, not completely nicely. It was somewhere between actually asking and baiting, as if she rode the precarious line between being kind and hateful in order to preserve her Gryffindorian self-dignity. Draco's ghost-searching eyes followed his Granger-hearing ears and he found her sitting at a table with at least fifty stones of books poised to kill. It was with some wryness that he said to himself (silently), "Of course she would be here, in the bowels of the lexicon." Because it hadn't occurred to him before, and because when he panicked he never thought about Hermione Granger at all.

He gave her his best condescending sidelong glance juxtaposed with a slight chin-lift (he'd really worked on this move), and turned to find the "Help I've Been Silenced and Can't Get Fixed" aisle. He felt really good about his execution. Without the distraction of words his choreography was truly impeccable. He found an aisle (if it could be called an 'aisle'; it curved and twisted like a snake, and he wondered if that was intentional) of books on hexes with complicated cures and supposed that was a good place to start.

Draco allowed his finger to glide along the spines of the books as he pathed down the aisle. As the ridge of one spine would fall away his finger would hit the next, and a tiny puff of dust would arise. More dust. Dust!

There was a presence at his side.

He turned to look and it was _her_ again, and she was _looking _at him with her plebeian eyes. He sighed soundlessly and made a face that implied he didn't have the time or patience for this as he turned to more intently study whatever crappy book it was he had his finger on. _Bathroom Hexes for Revenge on Clean Wizards. _Ugh! He quickly moved on to the next one, hoping that particular title didn't catch anyone's notice. _The Frozen North: Why It's Impassable. _That one was sufficiently respectable, and he pulled it out and started reading. Granger began to hover, and, in his mode of ignoring her completely, looked up at the top of the book shelves and wondered if he could gauge a jostling and the angles of falling books to fall in such a way so only at least forty of the fifty stones of books fell on Granger instead of himself. That would teach her… something. He guessed. But why was she still _looking _at him, and as he wondered this some sort of dread started to well up deeply inside of him and at the same time he was filled with the need to lash out because that's what Malfoys did, correct? They lashed out when cornered, but was he cornered? He wasn't cornered! This was lame-faced Hermione Granger, and the only thing stupider than a Gryffindor was a Hufflepuff, but that wasn't saying much because Hufflepuffs reminded him of mushroom sheep.

Draco shut his book with a loud slap and Granger jumped, which he noted with pleasure as he turned to leave. He'd just have to come back when the library was vacant of all Hermiones… which was unfortunately probably never.

"Malfoy!" He heard her library-whispering with as much intensity as he could imagine a person can muster from behind him. Through the years she must have really perfected all of the myriads of emotions one can emulate in a library whisper. He wasn't about to stop, though. He had a really lousy feeling that she was onto him. _Stupid smart muggle witch!_

"Malfoy!" Her whisper haunted him with increased intensity and volume… which meant she was pursuing him. He wasn't about to break into a sprint, but he did consider it. However, the thought of anyone seeing him being chased at a run out of the library by Hermione Granger greatly trumped the loss he would suffer from her knowing he'd been incurably silenced. Barely. He was sad.

Closing his eyes for a moment in resignation, he sighed (again silently) and turned to face the inevitable. Still, he gave her one of his best bored faces and perfectly raised an eyebrow.

She was looking at him, a guarded thing burning in her eyes, and he noticed their height difference. Perhaps she did too, because it took her a moment or two to formulate her words.

"There's something wrong with you, isn't there?" she asked, pointing, as if calling his bluff, which maybe that was what she was doing.

He looked at her, raised a finger to his lips, and pointed aside with a glance, visually reprimanding her for daring to speak, or make any noise at all, in the library.

To his delight, she looked terrified for a moment, glancing in the direction of his pointing, as if Madame Pince would be there, banning Granger for eternity for library-whispering in a distant corner of the most dangerous piles of books and most desolate, empty chambers of the library. It actually took a few seconds for it to process through her mind that the idea was ridiculous, and they could probably talk normally, or possibly sing a musical, and no one would hear them. But still, those few seconds when he knew he'd hit squarely on her knee-jerk reflexes were just heavenly for Draco and he used the opening to bolt (gracefully).

Unfortunately, Gryffindors are known for trying hard or something because she appeared at his elbow only a moment later. He'd only made it a step or two. He'd never get out at this rate.

So what does a Slytherin do when caught in a situation in which he'd rather not be caught? Find a way to turn it to his advantage. He turned to her.

"Why aren't you talking?" she asked him. As if he could answer.

"Has someone hexed you?" she asked him. As if he could answer.

"Why haven't you gone to Dumbledore?" she asked him. He felt like this was the stupidest question yet, and he let her know with his face. She took the hint. "Fine, well, you deserve it," she finished, and he supposed it was to get a jab in, but it was poorly done. He made a hand gesture that suggested she get on with it.

"Is there something I'm supposed to do?" she asked, not quite trusting and/or sure of his intention and/or request. He gave her a bored face, went to the nearest table, and sat down. A thin layer of dust coated the surface of the table and he became outraged. He was so absorbed with cleaning the dust from the table that he didn't notice Granger approach and sit down as well. She looked guarded but curious. Well, yes, of course she was curious. She was Hermione Granger and he was a petri dish full of undiscovered silence. She began looking more guarded and less curious and he realized he had been giving her a smile that would probably be interpreted as "devious" and so he cleared his throat (silently) and straightened a stack of papers on the table. Quill. Ink. Writing. He pushed a note across the table to Granger.

_If you think you're so smart, fix it._

Several things passed across her face as she read his note. Outrage, for one. Fury, radiant hatred… he was kind of transfixed by it. Then the Granger miasma was quelled with the same curiosity, nasty Gryffindor compassion (which will get them all killed someday), and intellectual interest. He was counting on the last one to work its magic on her. She gave him a scathing glance, and then spent the longest, most _annoying _amount of time looking for a quill in her bag. Honestly, the knocking around in her bag, and the books, and the wads of paper – it made him feel literally sick. At his wits' end, he made a loud show of slamming his quill down on her side of the table. She jumped, which was a reaction he always liked, took his quill and clipped ungraciously, "Thanks."

He was just glad she didn't awkwardly try to explain she just put her quill in there and doesn't know where it went, blah blah blah. That would have killed him.

Scritch of quill on the paper and loops were larger than his writing, ink… he smelled old parchment, very old parchment. Two or three books crumbled from a distant peak, but no avalanche this day. Granger pushed the parchment and quill back to his side of the table.

_Why should I fix it? This is an improvement._

Har-de-har-har.

_Why are you writing back? I can hear, you know._

She looked _so _embarrassed. It was these sorts of things that really made life worth living, he thought.

"Give me one good reason why I should care?" she asked him after the non-plussedness wore off. It was a totally moronic, Gryffindoresque question.

_Who said anything about caring?_

"Ugh, fine, why should I fix it?" she asked.

_Because you want to._

Draco watched her carefully (but under a guise of casually) as she read this response, and saw she was about to tilt towards complete abandonment outrage, so he pulled back the parchment and scribbled (impeccably) some more. He could give a little. Sometimes.

_NEWTs Final Project 1 – A Dissertation on the Research and Development of Curing Techniques for Maligned Silence Hexes by Hermione Granger - A+, Please come join us immediately following graduation despite your questionable upbringing, Love Always, The Ministry of Magic_

Upon reading his response she looked very dubious, tried to hide a little amusement behind the outrage (oh yes, he did catch that, nice try, Granger), and he knew he'd caught her because she _believed _him… to a degree. She could use this as a final project to flabbergast the academics. He didn't actually believe that, but at least he'd have some luck at getting fixed without letting it be known at large he was broken. One last thing:

_I remain your anonymous subject. _

She grabbed his quill and parchment and _wrote _something on it. Hadn't we been through this already?

After smacking both quill and note down on the table in front of him, she grabbed her bag and left.

_Do you think I'd ever let anyone know I worked with YOU?_

_Turret Ten at 5._

He smiled as her retreating dust faded slowly from his senses.

"Perfect," he would have said.


	3. Hot Wax

Turret Ten was the tenth turret from the left when one is facing Hogwarts. It wasn't the tallest or the shortest; it was pretty unremarkable when it comes to turrets, and it was the least occupied among the turrets in which students were allowed freely, because of enthusiastic bats.

Draco didn't particularly like bats, not much at all, but when one is involved in wizardry like he was, one tolerates bats. It comes with the territory. Draco, being pure blood-and-bred, was raised from infancy to tolerate batkind, and it seemed as if the bat toleration was like a magic thread which flowed down through the Malfoy veins through all generations of time. Not that anyone ever discussed it or thought about it. Malfoy bat toleration simply _was._

That said, Draco stood at the top of Turret Ten at five in the late afternoon, or early evening (the perplexing, undefined nature of five was not lost on him), gazing picturesquely at the distant scenery below, which was also picturesque. He had had a very interesting day of avoiding talking to anyone, and avoiding anyone wondering why he wasn't talking to anyone. One day of that was "very interesting", however two days would be very something else. He didn't believe it would maintain its novelty, despite that Draco continually craved intellectual challenges.

He wanted to yell ACCIO CHAIR, but it wasn't going to happen, and there were no chairs. Therefore, he continued to gaze in a picturesque way over the balcony at the top of Turret Ten, awaiting the arrival of Hermione Granger.

A soft, grating, puffing noise alerted Draco to Granger's arrival. He gave her his best "You are late and wasting my extra important and expensive time" face. She didn't see it, however, and he mourned the loss of such a perfectly executed facial expression to the bats.

"I…" she huffed, "Had a … meeting."

There _were _a lot of stairs, coming up here.

"And … it went late." She coughed.

He decided he'd spend some more time being picturesque and cold. The sunset wasn't terrible. Let her grovel in his glory for her truancy.

"Hey, look at me," she commanded. He was annoyed, but looked away from the sunset to her. Her cheeks were flushed and there were some wild strands of hair being flung about her face. She definitely had an earthy plebeian vibe going. Too bad the Gryffindor glimmer in her eyes was so pitiful to him.

"What?" he tried to say, forgetting his impairment. His lips moved, but nothing else happened. She understood anyway.

"I need for you to write down exactly what happened," she said, and then she started fishing around in her bag, and _oh MERLIN_ it was like the nightmare in the library all over again. He held out a hand to stop her, and she gave him a questioning look.

Draco opened his bag, pulled out a quill (from the quill holder in which it _always_ was kept!), ink, and paper, and it only took him five seconds!

Sadly, she didn't take note of his methods, so it was likely she wouldn't use them. The realization caused him intense disappointment that he would probably be forced to watch her search for a quill in her bag again someday. He began writing to distract himself from his torment.

"Have you any more details at all?" she asked him as she held the much-written-on parchment, and he had to give her props for being so detail-oriented. If only she'd extend that attention to other parts of her life, like fixing her hair or organizing her schoolbag…

_We're going to miss dinner, _he wrote back.

He didn't actually want to go to dinner, except sustenance was essential. The socializing was the problem.

"Oh," she said, and then she _rummaged _again, and he loathed rummaging so very much, but she produced some horrible looking sandwiches and he supposed that might be tolerable due to this being such an emergency.

Thus they ate cold sandwiches, sitting on the cold stone floor, leaning their backs against the cold stone of the balcony, in the cold air, and there were bats (the cold made them less enthusiastic) and it was very quiet, forcing Draco to notice things he wouldn't normally notice. First off, it was quiet. Second, Granger was comfortable company. She didn't expect much from him, especially since he was disarmed. She just wanted to find out what was wrong with him. Third, cold sandwiches made for a lousy dinner.

The most ambitious stars pricked the medium blue sky as it deepened toward night, though darkness was some time, some minutes, and some infinite shades of blue away. High, cold clouds existed pointlessly in ripped shreds like wraiths. He breathed a flowing ghost of air in the chill. When had this turret been abandoned to the bats? Why?

"Do you want to go to the library?" she asked the opposite wall, but him. He did.

They ran together like children through the most backward, unused, dusty halls and shifting stairs of the castle, playing an adapted game of hide-and-go-seek with themselves being free and the entire student body of Hogwarts being "it". Discovery would be complicated. Secrecy was simple, and strangely enough, _fun. _Draco knew – he just _knew _– Granger was enjoying herself too. Probably because, infectiously, she smiled from time to time as a hallway was breached, as discovery was avoided, with the huffing of running across the stone floor to a doorway and the thrill of making it and the absurdity of doing this in the first place. They came to a hiding halt behind the shadow of a suit of armor that must have been made for a giant… or at least a half-giant. The giant suit looked as if it had been recently polished. Draco wondered what warranted polishing and what warranted being left to dust and the decision making process of both, and who made it. Elves? Elves were mostly useless creatures, by his estimation. A soft panting at his side drew his attention to Granger as they both caught their breath, and he remembered the freedom he had just experienced. He wasn't _Draco Malfoy_ with her right now. There were no expectations, no wars, no blood, nothing but the aim of making it to the library without being seen – the aim to remain free, to capture this moment of freedom and sustain it as long as it could be kept. He hadn't felt so unburdened since he was a small child, playing, careless.

She puffed a quiet laugh that seemed to say "This is crazy and hilarious!" and he was caught, infected, and covered the genuine smile that graced his features. No wonder she and her lousy friends were always sneaking around! It was great! However, he steeled himself and gave her a reprimandsome look.

The hall was empty and he stepped into it but was side-blinded by a sudden collision with great, encompassing, slow, eternal… a chill consumed him and the scent of ancient wrappings, a massive conglomeration of wisps and wisdom – he forgot to breathe, he forgot to breathe. Is there anything else but this? He wondered.

It passed, and he breathed in warmth and consciousness. In front of him, still passing slowly, was the ghost of the elephant. Why was it here! He never wanted to see that elephant again, let alone be caught in the belly of the beast (literally). The cold, dead belly. He shivered.

Life touched his arm, and he looked back to see it was Hermione Granger and felt a moment of juxtaposition and vertigo.

She beckoned and they were off again like shadows on stairs that moved and they moved with the stairs and jumped and fled until they'd touched home base at the end of the snake-aisle, behind twelve stacks of books, sitting in the corner reading books on the floor like orphans of their respective Houses.

_Dear Hermione,_

_ How are you today? I am fine._

He wrote to her and she laughed. What was this and how had it happened? Open books were around them, parchments too. How did they not despise each other? How did she make him feel so comfortable? How? How? His mind screamed.

"I like it when you don't talk," said Hermione in that frank Gryffindor way, as if the realization was hers as well as his to digest. As if it was _no big deal!_ As if they were not mortal enemies just a moment prior. Well, perhaps not just a moment. And maybe they weren't actually _mortal _enemies before…

_You aren't the first person to say that today._

Pansy swept through his mind.

"I'm not surprised," she said to him, daring to smirk. He brushed nonexistent lint from his sleeve, an act of nonchalance. She was smiling more than he had ever seen her smile. To be truthful, he'd mostly only seen her scowl. Or glower. He didn't spend a lot of time watching her when she wasn't involved in a conflict. Conflict with him, usually. Her voice brought his attention back to the present.

"Would you mind listing anyone … or anything else that was there when it happened?" she asked him. "Just in case… you know. Details can be important."

_No one else was there. Some paintings. Lame elephant ghost. Do you want to see the hallway?_

"The same elephant ghost you just ran into?" she asked him.

_He ran into ME._

Draco was disgusted by the suggestion that he would simply run into a ghost of such slothfulness. Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Yes, yes, whichever."

Whichever! Details were important! The indignity. Merlin, why was she smiling?

"I think I have something!" She yelled, but it was still a library whisper, evidencing her adept skill at the sport. Hermione Granger would never get thrown out of a library, Draco concluded.

Meanwhile, she had her face in a book, a large book. The paper was thick and it smelled like glue. He couldn't ask her what she was reading so he leaned over and lifted the cover. Her concentration broke, slight annoyance (this was _serious business _), but he got a glimpse of the familiar cover. _Hogwarts, A History_. Naturally. She flipped pages like a mad squirrel rifling through its precious acorn stock. She murmured to herself. She seemed abnormally excited. It was actually kind of fascinating to watch. He tested how far he could put his quill feather in front of her face before it would break her manic book-attack.

"Stop that!" She swatted his quill away, and then nearly knocked him over with the book and herself as she assaulted him with knowledge. She pointed fiercely at some words and began to talk, but he wasn't focusing at all on that, because he finally realized why she was first in their class. She was _really good at this_. Ugh. He just stared at her, realizing he was probably fated to second in class… forever, unless he did something about it, and that just caused all kinds of tangents to explode into brain-fractals.

"Draco-" She stopped abruptly at his name, his _name_, and his thoughts stopped abruptly at her voice conjoined with his name, and in the vacuum that followed a candle melted just beyond structural resistance and collapsed into a mess of hot wax, with nothing left of the smothered fire but a sinuous, faint line of smoke.

One candle down, the light in the deep library corner dimmed slightly.

The acute sensation of her arm pressed against his bled into his senses, as she still held the book between them. He became suddenly, wildly, madly, overwhelmingly aware of _her_ and where her arm was and her hand beneath the book, and the radiance of her, _her_ – he drew a breath and looked away, moved just enough away, and he felt cursed.

Her voice came out unusually soft.

"I…" she began, "I…" she said again, and Draco believed the tide was swallowing him with each incomprehensible sound. He closed his eyes and wished he could talk, and hoped she wouldn't touch him. He heard her inhale, and the sound of the book shifting in her hands, and the sound of her moving, and when he tested sight again he found she was further away. The hope of breathing normally again was now within his reach. Almost there.

"I think I know what's wrong with you," she said to him, as he thought there were a million things wrong with him at that moment. She dropped the book on the floor between them (nice barrier, he liked that), and pointed at a picture of a ghost elephant in _Hogwarts, A History_, labeled:_ Pachyderm of Leeds Circus dies in tragic potions accident at Hogwarts, 1889_. "That's your elephant."

He looked at her, moved until he was sitting across from her, the book between them, and used the open book as his table to write:

_So?_

"That elephant cursed you," she said.

He gave her a perplexed and possibly dubious face.

She threw her hands up and said (as if obvious), "You have to read the rest of the chapter to know the details!"

He glanced at the book, and then at her.

_So what's the cure?_

"Persimmon stew," she replied, pointing out a paragraph as evidence, as if he could read it from that far away and upside down. Despite the fact that persimmon stew sounded extremely questionable as a cure for anything, he found himself believing her. And why shouldn't he? She was a Gryffindor, full of truth and righteousness and general stupidity. It would get her and her friends killed someday, but he considered the certainty of her eventual ignominious Braveheart death with less enthusiasm, now.

Alarm bells pounded with his pulse in every level of his mind.


End file.
